Brown Out

A brown out just happened in the cafe where I’m sitting. The question surfaced: I wonder why they call it a “brown out” and not a “black out”? Maybe it’s a small semantic change intended to ease the panic? I’m sure there’s some official definition, supported by formulas that were carefully crafted by sophisticated experts. I don’t know because I didn’t bother to do the research. But I do know this, a “brown out” certainly carries a lighter connotation than a “black out”. It just seems less serious. Meanwhile, black out sounds so perilous, so destructive, so ominous. Brown out gives an indication of what’s happening, but it also serves to calm the nerves. It dilutes the seriousness of the situation. It doesn’t cause that familiar chemical reaction. The one where cortisol gets injected into the bloodstream when the room suddenly goes dark and the electricity stops working. “Oh, it’s just a brown out. We’ve been here before! It’ll come back on very shortly.” Calling it a brown out is sort of like calling an economic slowdown a “recession”. “Don’t worry folks. Let me assure you, this is not good. The economy is indeed declining. But, don’t worry too much, this is only a recession. This isn’t one of those catastrophic depressions! If it were a depression, then you would be justified in your panic. I’d be telling you to batten down the hatches and hide all your remaining cash under the mattress. But this is just a recession. This is hardly even worth your attention. So, go ahead and keep spending. Keep heading to the mall and buying those new clothes that you’ve been eyeing. Head to the cafe and continue treating yourself to your overpriced oat milk latte. Head to Zillow and drool over that home that you’re so, so close to being able to afford. But, let’s be honest for the first time all day, whether this were a recession, depression, or our most bountiful period of economic explosion, you can’t afford that place you so excitedly favorited. In any economic state, purchasing that pad would be a fiscally irresponsible decision. That’d be like bidding on Diddy’s collateralized Miami mansion at an auction. Stepping foot in that place is irresponsible as is. But offering to buy that place, while living off of a teacher’s salary, is the definition of fiscal irresponsibility. But I digress, my duty was to come on the TV here and ease your nerves. My responsibility was to ease your panic so that you would keep spending without measured discernment. My task was the be the trusted authority figure, dressed in my version of the doctor’s white lab coat, an expensive, finely-tailored suit. You trust this suit, don’t you? I paid a lot for it. And I paid a lot for this tie too! These clothes ought to buy your respect. These garments ought to display my trustworthiness. Granted, even though I look rich, you have no insight into the actual state of my finances. Trust me, you’d be shocked if you saw my current bank account balance. And this is the first time today that I’ve said, “Trust me”, and I can ethically stand by what I say. I am, indeed, in crippling debt. Rest assured, I will likely not climb out of it. Anyway, the leaders that be asked me to come talk to you via this here tube in order to sooth your overflowing anxiety. They asked me to dress in my finest, most trust-inducing suit. They asked me to swing by the barber to get an expensive and I'm-as-boring-yet-trustworthy-as-your-doctor haircut. Because we desperately need you to keep spending, lest this recession will become a depression quite quickly. Wait... did I just say that? Damn it! Don’t panic! Seriously, please don’t worry. Please keep spending. If you don’t, then I’m gonna get fired. And if I get fired I’m gonna lose everything. I can’t afford my 7 bedroom house that’s outfitted with 3 cars in the driveway. We have 3 cars and a family with only 2 licensed drivers. Can someone please explain that math to me?!? I’m the economist and I still can’t figure out the calculus. We also have 7 bedrooms and 5 people in our family. Granted, I find myself in the guest room #1 a lot. My wife only agrees to sleep next to me when the moon's a waxing crescent. What can I say?!? She's a Pisces! I also can’t afford private school tuition for all 3 of my kids. Then again, what am I gonna do… send them to one of those publicly-funded atrocities? Lord help me if I stoop to such a low. Submitting my kids to a standard-issue education would surely induce in me the deepest of depressions. Damn it! I did it again! The one word I wasn’t supposed to say! I swear I could avoid my seemingly-inevitable financial ruin and afford all of this unnecessary garbage if only my wife would stop buying her daily oat milk lattes. Trust me, I need this job. And, in this case, I actually mean what I say. If you don’t keep spending, then I’m gonna get fired AND we’re going to head straight into a depression. Damn it! Again?!? Get it together, man! Please help me out here! Please show me some sympathy! Please keep spending! I need you, I'm begging you to keep this economy humming. A depression already looms. And if I lose this job AND the depression hits, then I’ll become broke like the rest of you who took my advice to keep spending your savings while we were heading into a declining economic period.” I imagine that’s the same sentiment of the electrical company (“company”, not “companies”, because, as is the case in the U.S., here, electricity is a legalized monopoly) and the local government when they refer to the current state of affairs that we’re all experiencing at the moment. They want to ease the nerves of their local constituents. They want to remain in the good graces of the locals who supply them with their power (financially & politically, but not literally. The literal power suppliers on the island are the local government and the local monopoly. The ones currently failing at their very simple job description.) They want the locals to hear the reassuring, yet unsubstantiated, directive: “Please don’t panic!” Sure, it’s the responsibility of the leaders to be the voice of calm in a calamitous situation. But, history will show us that the leaders & experts are no better at predicting the future than the rest of us. (See Exhibit #1: "brown out" that started in December and left the island powerless for 3 weeks).They tell us not to worry because they don’t want to have to deal with a panicked populous on top of the unfortunate situation that they, hopefully unintentionally, created. Look, I don’t want a chaotic situation any more than the next human. I’ve learned firsthand how distracting fear can be. But I’ve also learned to heighten my awareness and flip on the light of my discernment when a supposed authority figure — who contributed to the problem that we’re now facing — addresses me saying, “Trust me! Please don’t panic! Please trust me!” I fancy myself an optimist, not a skeptic. But, I'm also not in the business of putting my well-being in the hands of fallible, and especially power-hungry, human beings. (That said, I am power-hungry right now, but in a different way.) In the same way that the cafe just flipped on its backup generator, I might keep a lil extra cash stuffed under my mattress, no matter how much that “trusted” guy in the suit encourages me to “Keep on spending! They’re just fun coupons anyway!”